A technique pioneered by the surrealists in the early 20th century, the exquisite corpse is a collaborative compositional technique that allows a level of spontaneity and chance. In a traditional exquisite corpse, each participant completes a portion of a drawing, shows just the edge of that portion to the next participant, who then adds their own section based on the little they saw. The whole image is only revealed after all participants have contributed.
In addition to the exquisite corpse process, surrealists and dada artists were also pioneers of “mashing up” elements from disparate sources. Similar to the ideas of collage (which comes from the cubists, a little earlier) this putting together allows chance similar to the exquisite corpse. When combining disparate sounds and visuals, this is called an empathetic sound, or sound that comes from a different source and changes the context and effect of the visuals. Try this technique in the following exercise.
In this exercise, we will be completing a video exquisite corpse. Here, you will be given 2 short pieces of video. Your goal is to create a transition between the two clips. Your transition and be developed in many ways. It can be a story driven, conceptual, or strictly visual. Whichever direction you choose, you must think about the unique possibilities of creating in moving images. These things are:
Tempo-how changes of shots create a rhythm over time
Sequence- what happens when one shot is placed after another
Scale- moving from close up, to medium, to wide shots
Tension- using time and pace to create excitement
Feel free to explore effects, but try to use them in a way that enhances your transition.
Also, make use of both straight cuts and fades to give a sense of time to your work. (straight, or jump cuts, from one shot to another usually denote something that is happening at the same time, while fades denote a passage of time between shots.)
For this project, you can use material gathered from the internet. Use sources from:
In addition to the exquisite corpse process, surrealists and dada artists were also pioneers of “mashing up” elements from disparate sources. Similar to the ideas of collage (which comes from the cubists, a little earlier) this putting together allows chance similar to the exquisite corpse. When combining disparate sounds and visuals, this is called an empathetic sound, or sound that comes from a different source and changes the context and effect of the visuals. Try this technique in the following exercise.
In this exercise, we will be completing a video exquisite corpse. Here, you will be given 2 short pieces of video. Your goal is to create a transition between the two clips. Your transition and be developed in many ways. It can be a story driven, conceptual, or strictly visual. Whichever direction you choose, you must think about the unique possibilities of creating in moving images. These things are:
Tempo-how changes of shots create a rhythm over time
Sequence- what happens when one shot is placed after another
Scale- moving from close up, to medium, to wide shots
Tension- using time and pace to create excitement
Feel free to explore effects, but try to use them in a way that enhances your transition.
Also, make use of both straight cuts and fades to give a sense of time to your work. (straight, or jump cuts, from one shot to another usually denote something that is happening at the same time, while fades denote a passage of time between shots.)
For this project, you can use material gathered from the internet. Use sources from:
https://archive.org/ for both video and audio
http://freesound.org/ for audio
http://www.open-video.org
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Free_media_resources/Video contains links to these sites and more
ECVP Vol.2>> Languages from ExCorpse Project on Vimeo.